Life After Google is Now: 9 Pieces of Advice on How a New Site Can Succeed Without&nbspSearch

This post was promoted from YouMoz. The author’s views are entirely his or her own (excluding an unlikely case of hypnosis) and may not reflect the views of Moz.

Illustrated London News has a 170 year history as a content and print company. Recently we made the obvious move to bring one of our print publications online - PODIUM an intelligent view of sport.

Our major articles are in-depth interviews with sports stars, our commentary is from globally renowned pundits and we often do our own photo shoots. Cover stars so far have been Usain Bolt and Frankie Dettorri. Other Articles have focused on Golf, F1, The All Blacks, horse racing and the 2012 Olympics.

On the face of it, that sounds like an SEO's dream – rich, unique content that search engines will love. It's a pity that does not help us one little bit.

Am I going to get Search Engine traffic for "Usain Bolt" on a brand new website? To beat his own website, his sponsor Puma, the BBC or The Guardian? Not a chance.

So I decided to abandon the un-loyal scraps of long-tail search and to Design for Social

This is the tale of what I did to grow traffic for www.thepodiummagazine.com/ when SEO wasn't a viable option. There is still a lot more to do, but I think we have learned enough that it's worth sharing, for the attitude, strategy and outcomes so far.

By engaging people in a social context, we can keep them coming back with each release and create own our own traffic streams and marketing channels outside of Google and search engines.

WHAT DOES DESIGNING FOR SOCIAL MEAN?

PODIUM Version 1 with Facebook given equal weight as a web article

We had a clear strategy to leverage Social from Day One

1. Only the best goes online

I chose to put less online. Only the best articles, and pieces we thought would spark debate, made it online. This means we didn't water down the user experience – readers only get the good stuff. Where Search would say "Stick everything online and pray for longtail" I believe the mantra for Social is "Don't bore me. Blow me away!".

2. Twitter is for the Insider's View

Twitter would be owned by the Print Editor, (Andy @sportingpodium). This means we have a highly knowledgeable sporting writer who is able to engage online with the people we cover. When you cover Usain Bolt and your writers are guys like F1's David croft, getting them to retweet your coverage of them IS your Twitter strategy.

This is a virtuous circle of promotion, everybody taking part wins. Build this into your products and you have a marketing beast.

3. Facebook is for Debate

For Facebook, we decided to pick the most contentious article each edition and put it behind a like wall on Facebook.

The article would sit on the site homepage, looking like an article, but when clicked on, would take people to the Facebook page. Our hope is that people will debate these articles on our Facebook page, thereby taking advantage of Facebook Edgerank, to make these articles pop up into everyone's feeds.

4. It's all one product concept = better use of time and energy

This meant we could cut down our energy expenditure on where we were trying to funnel people. Instead of diluting our energy trying to get people to Facebook, Twitter and the Website, we focus on the website and allow the strategy and mechanisms built into our use of Twitter and Facebook to naturally accrue users on those platforms.

WHAT WE LEARNT

PODIUM Version 2 with Twitter and Facebook taking pride of place

5. Do more of what is successful

By the time we got round to Version 2, we found that Twitter was a steady audience builder. We wanted to promote Twitter in the same way as Facebook. We didn't do that by slapping a Twitter button onto the webpage.

In the new design, we made Twitter and a Facebook a living part of the website. Social is not an afterthought, the website is now a Social Content Delivery Mechanic.

6. Not everything succeeds

Facebook is hard for us and we haven't cracked creating the conversation there yet. This is partly due to the exciting rigours of turning print writers into digital writers. But each success that we do make, in traffic spikes and twitter followers, builds a stronger and stronger internal business case to pursue this route with other titles.

7. Jump on every opportunity

This means monitor your Analytics daily! We need to turn every scrap of attention into engagement. To do this you need to react quickly.

The debate piece

The first spike was a forum that had picked up our F1 piece, which certainly provoked some controversy.

I read their discussion and realised I could add something to it, so joined the forum and posted. This engagement kept the debate going, drove more traffic to the site and means we can go back in future and promote other F1 stories.

Note: I posted openly and clearly as Podium, clarifying a point without appearing spammy.

The Wow! Piece

I saw this traffic spike in the Analytics and tracked it back to the artist's Dribbble page. He had created a Pixorama for us to illustrate a story and linked to us from his Dribble account to say it was going to be in the Magazine shortly

This was not going to appear online but when I saw it and the traffic it was generating to our site from Dribbble, I knew it had to go on the site. I'm sure it is going to turn into awesome linkbait.

8. Partnerships = Win

This comes in two forms

Firstly, competitions for partners help us drive traffic but also allow us to make connection with brands in a scenario in which our first interaction is that we help them

Secondly, as we write our own, exclusive content with major stars, we can share some of it with another website. They will send traffic and link to us to read the full article. Sharing your unique content is something that would be hard to do if you had your SEO hat on, but in the social world, its fine.

As long as you have mechanisms set up to capture that visiting traffic on Facebook and Twitter, you are building your long term marketing channel.

9. Tools help

We learnt what generated buzz and discussion and tried to work that into our future thinking. F1 has a crazy community!

A tool like Followerwonk would be heresy to traditional print journalists as a means for deciding who is newsworthy, but it can now become part of our process in choosing who to cover, and who to talk to about specific sporting articles.

Followerwonk allows you to see the most influential people who have a keyword in their bios.

IN CONCLUSION

We still have a ton to do. But we have great, unique content at our disposal and real subject matter experts to create our conversations.

Long term, I am sure (and relieved) that the traffic we have seen and the community we are building will be a much better investment of our time and scarce resources than pure SEO.

About firstconversion —
Yaaar! I am the piratical, eye-patched founder of firstconversion.com where I do startup marketing. Stuck on shore after a regrettable incident with a whale, I have helped startups like Mendeley, Trialreach and Wooshii make money online and now work in Warsaw helping Codility. Codility either a) works to restock the North Sea with cod after it was all eaten by whales or b) tests developers skills during hiring so you don't waste time with people who can't code. Follow me on twitter @firstconversion (no whales)

Wow, great post! Thanks for the tips. You have some innovative and interesting social strategies here.

While the concept of abandoning SEO for social media is a bold and interesting one, I can't help but think it's slightly unwise. Social is a powerful traffic source, and if you can get your foot in the door on some of the powerhouses (Facebook, StumbleUpon) then it can be a huge boon to your site. As you noted, though, content directed towards social can be a great deal different than content directed to SEO in a lot of ways.

Social content that goes viral doesn't do so by accident; the most successful sites I've seen on StumbleUpon are composed of (in some cases) years of work. Sometimes it's an artist's collection of unique pieces, generated over the course of several months or years. Viral content isn't something that's easy to produce on a consistent basis and I think by wholly converting to a social media model could significantly raise production costs and lower your ROI, especially if a lot of the content you produce doesn't actually make it onto the site (as you noted).

SEO becomes a critical component when you're looking for consistent traffic. While neither social media nor SEO is a "set it and forget it" solution, SEO has quite a bit more staying power. A highly ranking page (even for long tail phrases) can generate steady traffic for months if it's an evergreen topic, whereas social traffic dies off after only a few hours (unless you're on StumbleUpon, but that's a different/more glorious story). Of course, as your site is primarily news-based, it's a better platform for social, as opposed to, say, a reference site.

I'm very intrigued by your strategies here. I admire your courage in making the wholesale switch to social, and I'd love to hear more updates on how it works out for you!

Theres a few different things in play here. ILN has a lot of print publications, and is experimenting with ways of bringing that content onlline. I think its good to take some bold steps

There is also an interesting Agency angle here: from an inbound marketing perspective, you need to have big, interesting case studies to stand up on stage and talk about. This can be one of them for ILN

We think of the value of SEO lies in bringing a constant stream of people to the website. In this situation, we are bringing them to Twitter and engaging with them every day. That may turn out to be a stronger, more loyal, more engaged audience than random long tail surfers

I think Mitch makes a good point. It doesn't have to be "either or" with social media and SEO. I've found that the two can be leveraged for each other to produce more dynamic results than either can by itself. Nothing about Internet marketing is all or nothing. The best campaigns attack from every possible angle.

By this post.. I have got to know that just a single highly researched SEO plan is not well enough to promote the site but it needs a highly researched ,planned and structured startegy to excute with intresting contents, here the tagline... for doing SMO ..."Don't bore me. Blow me away!" fits very well!!

I'm constantly awash with questions as to why I would turn potential clients away for SEO work (a good portion of them are new site owners who want to engage search as a part of their marketing). This is good information which supports why I would do that. It's not always the best idea to go SEO gung ho, and I think you've proven that here.

Very interesting, thanks for insight Stephen. It's probably an approach I'd like to take with own wannabe blog/news website that I hope to a little bit more seriously in the not-to-far future and I'll be taking some ideas from this :)

I've been thinking recently about switching the balance between social and search on a project that is just in its infancy. We dared to suggest that the site aims to actually become a social sharing hub in its own right and suddenly it seemed really important to get our heads around a completely different approach!

It made me realize how ingrained the notion that "social supports search" has become and how completely inaccurate that can be in some situations.

So, some great insights here that I found really helpful. I hope you'll consider following up with more posts as the project evolves.

Great insight. I've been working on an SEO plan but sound site architecture, on page optimization are only technical signals for search engine algorithms. It does not promote a better user experience.

The difficulty is explaining this because its obviously an on-going effort.

I like the strategy you have shared to build engagement in this social and connected world. Generating thoughtful, useful, relevant content will always make users either bookmark, share or mention it to others.

I've taken some mental notes and definitely want to incorporate these ideas into my SEO plan.

The thing missing here is SEO and Social Media are now integrated. You are missing out on the potential from which Social Media Signals brings to your SEO. Comment Interaction has grown increasingly important and people must be engaged with your content. Google Search has now incorporated Signals (all voices of your Social Media and Site Comments) into its current algorithm. Creating a conversation is what will help you both in Search and in Social Media (on your site linked from Social).

Instead of worrying about competing sites, maybe the thought process should have been more about carving out your own niche. There are tons of keywords built in with variance and in just doing 5 minutes worth of research I found numerous alternatives for your site which came back with none of the competition you have talked about (yet still had quantifiable search numbers).

Don't change direction completely, but don't ignore search either. You will see more success via a combined plan of action rather than the road you are on. I do this for a living myself and haven't found too many niches I haven't been able to slip myself into with the right keywords. Remember, your "related keywords" can push you just as far in your target keywords ranking.

I do not want to be negative but instead of "9 Pieces of Advice" this article should be "9 Things I Have Tried But Haven't Worked so Far" - Seriously their Facebook page has 45 likes, unless I am missing something! Also their daily traffic seems pathetic as well even on the days there was a spike! Again maybe I am missing something...

Interesting idea Stephen. I guess you're forgoing the typical SEO strategy, but building search engine traction by going around through the back door. Overall, I believe your results in the search engines may build quicker than using the typical methods. Well done for having the guts to try something many wouldn't.

Perhaps I misunderstood but are you advocating taking people away from your site and taking them to the social media platforms as part of the strategy? Does this relegate the website only to a jumping off platform?

Hi Casper, kind of. The concept is that if you have good content, restricting it to a website and trying to chase long tail traffic via SEO may not be the best way to spend your time, if you only have a small amount of time to spend on it

For me Life after Google is to pack my bags and to go home :) But i know many siites which doesnt get any trafic from google and your above sugestions but thy are steel the most visited in there niche.

A well researched and well thought out post. It hasn't been just about purely SEO for a long time now and this helps to highlight that. There are so many other considerations and as the saying goes, "Everything in Moderation".

Hi Ben, nothing from the magazine I think, the mag and site are both new. The mag gets distributed only in 1st class cabins of airlines trains etc, so I think the reading and online audiences will turn out to be quite different

Really loved your strategy on succeeding & bringing traffic to your site without search. What I was thinking is that only facebook & twitter are you using or there will be number of other sites like stumbleupon, linkedin, Google+ you'll be using?

What is your ultimate goal for this site? Increase traffic? Do you think can you able to sustain traffic in long term?

Hi Mate some good tips, I know what you mean exactly when SEO is not viable for a quick launch strategy. Have seen this more and more recently so yeah you really need to get in contact with industry leaders to leverage the strategy.

We work with a celebrity management company within our group so we can easily leverage deals via celbs social channels I recently assited on a social campaign which envolved Kim Kardashian, silly I know but the amount of influence she has and the power she can drive brands is second to none and she was the perfect fit for this high end client.

Hi, the tips are really great but I suspect that this is going to workout for an ecommerce website. It is good to implement this on a website that has rich content and information as in our case and for most of the news and publication or magazine websites.

Very interesting post and good to see that it's possible to reach an audience without relying on Google. Stephan, do you think it's possible to reach millions of people through these channels without relying on search engines?